I’m shocked. This year was a damn good year for new movies. There were ups: Dredd, Total Recall, Argo, and downs: Prometheus, Looper, Flight, and the in-betweens: Django Unchained, John Carter, The Avengers, and this stands in direct opposition to the last couple of years, whose downs and in-betweens weren’t nearly as interesting. 2010 is defined to me as purely Scott Pilgrim, and 2011, purely Drive. 2012 on the other hand saw a deluge of good movies… but still not enough for me to compile a top ten list.

Maybe if I actually managed to see Life of Pi like I set out to, and maybe if I lived in a major city to see Zero Dark Thirty when it came out, but no, shut up — this is Dreck Fiction’s Top Ten Movies of 2012 Rundown, a list of questionable raison d’etre, outside of making ten arguably quality recommendations…

10. The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Dir. Christopher Nolan

I hate myself. When The Dark Knight came out and everyone loved it, I could not see the value in it. Nolan’s sequel was boring, overwrought, and dumb as hell. Now, when The Dark Knight Rises comes out and people are generally positive on it but don’t think it’s as good as it could’ve been, I scratch my head yet again. I loved The Dark Knight Rises. It’s visually stunning, socially resonant, and exciting. So am I a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian? At this point, I can’t tell, all the way over here in my lonely, argumentative corner. In some ways, I don’t care, because The Dark Knight Rises and it’s lack of Batman, introduction of neat visual icons, and cool dystopic story, keeps me welcome company.

9. Persepolis (2007) Dirs. Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud

From what little I understand of comics, Persepolis and other autobiographical comics that dominated the underground scene of their time… set the medium. Nowadays any serious comic is like this, but I’d be hard pressed to find an artist with as powerful a story as Marjane Satrapi’s. This movie is beautifully animated, and tells a heartbreaking story of a difficult coming of age during bloody history in the making. It’s a microscope pushed all the way in during a greater conflict, and the humanist themes found are just as emotionally sweeping as in any great war epic.

8. Total Recall (2012) Dir. Len Wiseman

With every remake, we ask: did we really need a remake? The answer is almost always “no,” but I’m glad for a few reasons we got Total Recall 2012 (maybe in fifty-eight years we’ll get a Total Recall 2070). One reason is that for a sci-fi action movie, it isn’t boring as all get-out. There is action from start to finish, which is plainly shocking. How did they afford that? Typically the action movie dynamic is: all the action scenes are super expensive so they can’t be all the movie, so let’s pad this out with exposi — oh shit we forgot to write a story. Here, it’s not only action but action in a lavish sci-fi world. A familiar one, yes, but hey. How many movies are set in current day L.A.? I could stand to see a few more set in 2019 L.A., if I’m being honest.

7. The Man with the Iron Fists (2012) Dir. RZA

This movie and Cloud Atlas really bum me out. In twenty years, people will look back on them and call them cult classics. Movies that fucking failed financially, finally fulfilling forgotten… (where am I?) finally gaining notice only when it’s too late for the filmmakers to benefit and make another. These movies are really something else, and it totally upsets me that people call for originality and novelty in their movies, and then slam these two for being different. I don’t have much new to say on The Man with the Iron Fists, other than I’m so glad I saw it in theatres. I’ve missed way too many modern cult classics — Slither, Grindhouse, and Scott Pilgrim come to mind — when they were in theatres and making no money.

6. The Raid: Redemption (2011) Dir. Gareth Evans

I curse The Raid: Redemption for only one reason — it partially ruined the otherwise perfectly fine Dredd. This is a martial arts movie that goes for the hard hits, and even though I’ve seen that meth lab battle a few times, I always wince at the big impacts. I haven’t been this physically affected by an action movie since the first and second viewing of Crank 2, in all its nipple-cutting glory. I love energy in movies, so if you want to be blown away by a pure action spectacle (think 300 but with no slow motion and an actual story), The Raid: Redemption is just as good as everyone says.

5. Chungking Express (2005) Dir. Wong Kar Wai

Wong Kar Wai is a vicious filmmaker who goes after cinematic conventions like a Charles Bronson-esque vigilante. Though I can’t get my head around how he does it (I assume, with his method, he’d have to fuck up at some point — he’d have to), I’m glad he makes movies as good as this, Chungking Express, often considered his best movie (though I prefer 2046). This movie is two parts — two love stories featuring gorgeous people in a gorgeous city looking despondent through windows at each other.

4. Battle Royale (2000) Dir. Finji Fukasaku

Django Unchained wins points for its tremendously bloody violence, but there isn’t too much of it in the end. Battle Royale somehow manages to keep its chaos going throughout its run, and though it’s generally difficult to stomach (fifteen year olds in school uniforms machine-gunning each others’ bodies apart), the adrenaline matches your guilt. I don’t like the idea behind this movie, I think it’s a little too harsh, but it does create the scenario I love from horror-comedies (this is not horror-comedy, for the record), where characters react realistically and funnily to an insane situation. I think to that scene where two students are shooting at each other at the start of the game, hesitating and stumbling over each other like the fisticuffs in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I’m a little dissapointed that Chiaki Kuriyama went out so quickly, and that after Kill Bill: Vol. 1 she didn’t do much high-profile stuff… but the shotgun dude was cool, and he made up for it.

3. The Road Home (2000) Dir. Zhang Yimou

As much as I might bellyache over The Road Home‘s core conceits, that of good ol’ fashioned, freeze-your-ass off transcendental living, y’all goddamn cityfolk, and one person’s definition of feminism in the obsession and stalking of a man, I can’t help but be utterly silenced by its sweeping, rollercoaster romance. Its got easily my favorite score I heard this year, with that main theme swelling in just the right points in the narrative, keeping the tears inside on a steady flow. For such a tiny story where scope and scale are concerned, there are moments that feel like punches to the gut — this is exemplary cinematic storytelling, audio/video as literary device akin to In the Mood for Love. The sequence of our heroine’s initial courting of the dude builds brilliantly: she attempts to wait for him as he walks along the road (home), but gets cold feet and ducks behind the bushes three or four times. When she finally sums up the courage, she passes him on the road (home) and he gives her a nod. She smiles really big and the theme swells — no dialogue, all expression.

2. Cloud Atlas (2012) Dirs. Andy and Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer

Like I said earlier with Iron Fists, this makes me so sad. You’ll notice that when critics talk down on Cloud Atlas, their criticisms are vague as hell. I don’t believe they know why they hate the movie, and frankly, sir, I don’t believe I know why I like the movie. But I felt it as I sat there in an uncomfortable ass, stadium-seating-impaired theatre, craning my neck upward. The movie pounded with life and imagination, it was like a guided tour through three of the most creative minds in film. I don’t know what we were meant to take away from the film (a reason why it’s not #1), but I feel like if I were to begin deconstructing it, I’d ruin the purity of experience for myself. Also, go Keith David!

1. Brokeback Mountain (2005) Dir. Ang Lee

“Are they gay?” my friend asks when I’m watching it for a second time.
“I think… they’re confused.”

The right answer is simpler: it doesn’t matter. Labels have no place here. This is a story about individuals who are destroyed by such things — cultural expectations, masculine and familial priorities — so any frazzled critic who shouts that calling these characters homosexual marginalizes the bisexual community needs to sleep on it (back in 2005). The characters at various points in the movie maintain that they’re both straight men, and this represents a major failure in American (and global) society. Brokeback Mountain doesn’t point fingers or complain, it does a movie’s job, and makes a much more powerful statement in doing so. One of its most sympathetic characters is actually one of the two men’s wives, and indeed, the film illustrates the destructive power of intolerance in the female characters it reaches indirectly. In my opinion, one of the most heart-wrenching (if somewhat hokey) lines is delivered by Delmar’s (Heath Ledger) second girl.

For a supposedly straight male, I tend to concern myself a lot with LGBT issues (there’s that contrarian again?), but Brokeback Mountain doesn’t speak to The Man Inside me (who will one day walk free of the pain), but the humanist I aspire to be.

7 comments

And apparently there was a S******n movie, but the filmmakers weren’t allowed to use the name S******n in the title or call him S******n anywhere in the movie. The guy with the cape and the blue suit, you know?

Hey how’s it going, man? Yeah it’s been a while — working on a new site, I’ll post a link here when everything’s set.

2013 indeed… For me, there’ve been three highlights — Fruitvale Station, which was pretty good, The Place Beyond the Pines, which was great, and Pacific Rim, which was unreal. Jurassic Park 3D might’ve been this year but I don’t know if that counts.

Dead Man Down and World War Z vie for worst picture so far, not that I expected anything from the latter, and to my varying degrees of chagrin I missed a few 2013 releases: Star Trek, Oblivion, The Wolverine, Olympus has Fallen…

Did they really not make reference to the name ‘Superman?’ That’s just awful. It’s like this big self-loathing tentpole factory out there in H-Wood. They’re aware of the drivel they push but have to push it anyway. 2013 might be the first year in many I haven’t seen a single superhero movie. Fine by me…

Looking forward to Mandela, The World’s End, and Riddick, even though it looks like more of the same. You?

Yes, it’s true. We can’t call Superman Superman and we can’t call Catwoman Catwoman. I sincerely hope that in 20 years everyone looks back on this fad of “dark and realistic” comic book movies and shakes their head in shame. Although I’ll eventually see The Dark Knight Rises, simply because everyone I know who hated The Dark Knight has been telling me that it’s surprisingly good, and everyone who loved The Dark Knight thinks it’s some kind of abomination. Anything that’s hated by people who loved The Dark Knight can’t be all that bad.

Anyway. I haven’t been seeing too many new movies this year, mostly because everything looks so atrocious. I find the very idea of three Hobbit movies offensive (and I’m not even a Tolkien fan) and I couldn’t even finish the World War Z book so there’s no hope for the movie. Iron Man 3 is supposed to be good, but then The Avengers was supposed to be good and I fell asleep halfway through that shit.

You’d think that I would have rushed out to see Pacific Rim since I’ve got over 30 Japanese monster movies on my DVD shelf and could talk to you all day about obscure movies like Daimajin, but something about Guillermo del Toro’s movies just rubs me the wrong way, the way he panders to geeks. The mere fact that they’ve been using the word “kaiju” in the trailers on TV kind of terrifies me. I’ll catch it on Blu-ray at least, since I had the same “fuck that” attitude about Dredd but ended up loving Dredd when I finally picked it up on video.

Die Hard 5 was this year’s Total Recall, forgettable but enjoyable schlock that isn’t nearly as bad as critics would have you believe. There’s this schlocky horror movie coming out this year called Frankenstein’s Army that I’m interested in. You can find a red band trailer online that makes it look sort of what a live-action Wolfenstein movie should look like. Everything I’ve seen about Elysium has been screaming “hey guys, I did District 9, remember?” And I guess the director of Drive has a new movie with Ryan Gosling that the critics hate.

I just don’t care about anything this year. I just want to stay home and watch Dredd and The Raid again. Perhaps I should be checking out lesser known stuff. I’m sure I would enjoy Fruitvale Station and The Place Beyond the Pines more than whatever offensively stupid looking shit that Pixar has out now involving talking boats or tractors or whatever.

I’ve spent 2013 mostly enlightening myself by checking out older movies that I should have seen much earlier, like the excellent 1980s drama Kiss of the Spider Woman, a terrific old thriller called The Hitch-Hiker (it’s like if The Hitcher was made in the 50s), and I corrected the horrible mistake of having never before seen Sonny Chiba’s insane The Street Fighter.

On second look, the Hobbit was actually 2012, although we’re getting the second one this year. It gets to compete with Captain America 2 and Thor 2 for the title of Sequel Least Capable of Justifying its Existence.

Del Toro is almost like Tarantino for me, a guy whose persona I like more than his movies, but I actually really love Hellboy (sequel need not apply), and Blade II. And Pacific Rim is really outstanding. It manages to sever all ties to its genre context in terms of references of fan service, and that might be because common sense dictates that $500 million worth of Americans don’t care about giant monsters, but I think it’s more that when a talented director like del Toro sets out to make a ‘love letter’ to the old monster movies, that aspect is gonna be a byproduct of good storytelling, though that word is specifically defined with this film.

Elysium on the other hand seemed to be the perfect follow up to D9 — oh good he’s doing a similar ‘smart SF’ in an Africa-looking place. But this movie is so poorly written and acted (Jodie foster-bot says “I mad you”) it makes you wonder if D9 is gonna be yet another Boyz N the Hood, Donnie Darko, and the rest

I’ll take a look at that Frankenstein’s Army — invoking Wolfenstein is definitely a strong point in its favor at least where aesthetic is concerned

Pacific Rim at least looks interesting enough for me that I’ll probably blind buy the Blu-ray when it comes out. I mean, if I’ve got a copy of Godzilla vs. Megalon on my shelf, I’ve really got no excuse. I was really getting the idea that it was some sort of masturbatory fan film like Jackson’s Kong or Singer’s Superman or Tarantino’s everything, the kind of thing for which I have little tolerance these days. Glad to hear that it steers clear of most of that stuff.

I just read online that Blomkamp’s next movie is going to be about “a robot imbued with artificial intelligence who is stolen by two local gangsters who want to use him for their own nefarious purposes,” based on one of his old short films. I assume it’ll be yet another “some people treat others poorly and that’s sad” story. As much as I enjoyed District 9, the guy seems depressingly one-note.

Jesus. Don’t forget about Machete Kills, though I guess that’s this year. The one time Trejo is the leading man, the one time! They just… it’s such an easy formula…

That being said the only one on that list I will see is Sin City 2, so long as he keeps frank miller in the frank miller corner and makes another good movie

Night at the Museum 3, huh?

The Counselor was a big industry deal for obvious reasons and I think Scott is a good match, but his last good movie was in 2000. It’s all script with him and though its funny to say, McCarthy is a first time writer (unless I’m mistaken)

I’m more interested in Godzilla than say Jurassic Park IV, though they’re essentially the same systematic studio things — take a foreign film director and give them a big franchise so you can control them — only this time they’re both indie film stars. Never saw Safety Not Guaranteed but nothing I’ve heard about it makes me think “oh give that guy Jurassic Park.” Monsters on the other hand, the Godzilla director’s prior output, was really average. Could be good. Figure they have Emmerich/Devlin’s movie as an example…

Robocop is one of my favorite movies of all time. Total Recall, The Thing — I love these movies but I didn’t mind that they were being remade. I’m worried that I actually give a shit about Robocop ’14.

This Christmas I’ll be checking out Oldboy, which looks… interesting. It’ll give me another excuse to rewatch the original